


you've almost convinced me i'm real

by cosmicmewtwo



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Do Androids Dream of Bulma Briefs?, F/F, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 04:52:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17676815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicmewtwo/pseuds/cosmicmewtwo
Summary: The third time Eighteen awakens, the woman is already waiting for her.She’s leaning over Eighteen, her face only inches away, and Eighteen jolts at the proximity, the wires on her scalp immediately tugging at her hair.“Now before you go ahead and try to kill me again,” the woman says, seemingly unperturbed by Eighteen’s previous murder attempts, “I’m gonna tell you right now: the only reason you’re even awake right now is because of me.”A Cell Saga AU where Eighteen ends up in Bulma's laboratory instead of Sixteen.





	you've almost convinced me i'm real

 

XXX

 

Eighteen gasps awake in a dark laboratory, but it’s not one she has any memory of.

She blinks for several, long moments, trying to acclimate to the dim lighting and the stabbing pain that rings through her skull like a seismic wave. Her right temple feels like ground zero of a cometary impact, and she reaches a stiff arm to touch it, to see what sort of damage she’s sustained—her fingers slip through her hair only to find thick wire attached to an electrode. She blinks again, and realizes several more wires are attached to her, leading away into a bank of dark computer terminals.

She sees no ubiquitous Red Ribbon symbol anywhere—no sign that this place has anything to do with Gero. Something about that should give her some measure of relief, but instead she feels her heart racing closer toward panic.

She hears tapping, and raises her head to find the source of it. A figure sits in front a computer screen, their features backlit by a harsh, blue glow. Eighteen finds her gaze drawn to a separate, smaller pinprick of light—the burning end of a cigarette, held aloft in the figure’s slender fingertips before being gently tapped off into the ashtray next to their keyboard. The acrid smell nauseates Eighteen immediately.

Eighteen sits up straight from the slab she’s laid on, pulling off her electrodes. She’s rewarded by a jarring alarm sound from one of the computer terminals, and the headache threatening to split her skull apart becomes a hot knife in her temple.

The figure turns in her seat, alerted by the noise, and Eighteen is greeted by un unfamiliar woman whose piercing blue eyes glint even in the twilight of the laboratory.

“Well, rise and shine, Cyborg Barbie,” the woman chirps before ashing out her cigarette completely. “I was wondering when you’d finally come back online.”

Eighteen says nothing, her lip curling into a snarl. She raises her hand, palm forward, and an easy, familiar subroutine boots up—she feels energy coursing through her, rising up from her core until it’s gathering in her hand—

And just as she’s about to release it in the direction of the woman, her vision sparks black, and a thick darkness rises up to claim her.

 

 

XXX

 

 

The second time Eighteen awakens, she’s faster to react.

The pain in her skull has dulled to a throbbing ache, and she wonders how long she’s been out this time—hours? Days?

She tries to go back further, to retrace the timeline of how she got here—wherever _he_ _re_ is. When the memory finally does rise up, it comes back in fragmented chunks, corrupted and incoherent. She remembers Sixteen yelling at her, shouting for her to get back—and her brother’s screams, the awful sounds he’d made as Cell had… had  _devoured_ him—

Even in the darkness of the lab around her, Eighteen feels the room spinning around her as she pulls herself to a sitting position. She’s on the same slab as before, in the same room—she sees the same, dark banks of computer terminals, this time all of them turned off or left idle, a double-C logo left rotating as their screensavers. She realizes she recognizes the symbol.

_Capsule Corp._

But the woman from before is nowhere to be found.

Eighteen swings her legs over the slab, her body stiff from lying still so long. The wires from before had been reattached, and she pulls them out, ignoring the pain from the ones that had been embedded into her skin, like thin lamprey biting into her ganglia. The throbbing in her head is more insistent, and it drowns out every other pain easily.

She moves to the edge of the room, her hand following along the wall for balance until she finds a doorway left ajar; as she nears it, she catches the sound of a pair of voices carry through the narrow opening.

Eighteen pushes the door open completely, and finds herself in another annex of the laboratory. She sees the woman, seated at a desk, bouncing a baby on her lab, a much older man sitting across from her.

The woman notices her immediately, her eyes narrowing into a frown.

“Sorry, Dad, hang on a sec,” she interrupts before she speaks to Eighteen directly. “Hey, look—before you try to kill me again—

But Eighteen ignores her, and lunges forward to attack—

And the darkness overtakes her once again.

 

 

XXX

 

 

 

The third time Eighteen awakens, the woman is already waiting for her.

She’s leaning over Eighteen, her face only inches away, and Eighteen jolts at the proximity, the wires on her scalp immediately tugging at her hair.

“Now before you go ahead and try to kill me again,” the woman says, seemingly unperturbed by Eighteen’s previous murder attempts, “I’m gonna tell you right now: the only reason you’re even awake right now is because of me.”

But Eighteen is already annoyed, and her mind flicks rapidly through a well-worn decision tree—she reaches out to grab the woman’s neck almost on instinct, and squeezes hard enough to threaten.

“Who are you?” Eighteen asks, her voice raspy from disuse. “And what the fuck have you done to me?”

The woman reaches for Eighteen’s wrist, but lacks the strength to pull Eighteen’s hand away. Her features darken into a frown as she looks down at Eighteen.

“I’m Bulma,” she says, swallowing thickly against the grip on her neck, and Eighteen can feel the bobbing of her throat beneath her palm. Eighteen focuses on the beat of her pulse—oddly steady, given the woman’s vulnerable position—and Eighteen toys with the thought ripping out her carotid.

But the woman—Bulma—continues to speak.

“And I haven’t done anything to you—I’m trying to _fix_ you.”

Eighteen blinks at the implication. Her brain churns and calculates before offering up the word _broken_ , and suddenly it feels like something cold and hollow has opened up inside of her. She feels her grip loosen from Bulma’s neck.

“ _Fix_ me?” she echoes back, her voice falling flat.

“You’re in this predicament because of Cell,” Bulma clarifies, pulling Eighteen’s limp hand away. “Though given how hard you were hit, I’m not too surprised it scrambled your memory, too.”

But Eighteen does remember: her brother, cannibalized by that fucking monstrosity. And it had been coming for her next, Sixteen’s voice the last thing she heard before she felt the thing’s tail slam into her temple—

She blinks again, and feels everything slide suddenly into harsh, blinding focus.

“He absorbed them,” she says, her revulsion almost enough to crack through the mechanical tone of her voice. “He absorbed them both. He took Sixteen instead of me.”

“Yeah,” Bulma confirms, giving a weak shrug. “Yeah, that’s… about right.”

“Then that means he’s…” Eighteen stiffens, unable utter the word _perfect_  without feeling sick. “I can’t be here. I have to find him, I have to stop him before—”

But Eighteen doesn’t elaborate—she’s already sitting up, wires pulling at her skin as she tries to swing herself off the table, but Bulma pushes back against her shoulders.

“Hey, hey—cool your jets, would you?” she says, and Eighteen’s glare is immediate, but Bulma doesn’t seem to notice. Or care. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re not in any fighting condition right now.”

“Fuck you,” Eighteen says, pushing her hands away. “I don’t have time for this—”

“Yes, actually, you do,” Bulma snaps. “In fact, while you were busy getting your beauty sleep, Cell took it upon himself to announce some fucking death tournament he’ll be holding in ten days—if you want really want to kick his ass, you’ll get your chance then.”

“Then let me go,” Eighteen hisses. “I need—to train, to prepare—”

“Not in this condition, you’re not,” Bulma says, and gestures at Eighteen’s head with a whirl of her index finger. “Aren’t you curious why you keep blacking out? And why it keeps happening when you try to attack me?”

The dim memory of her head injury bubbles back to the surface, and Eighteen reaches for her temple almost unconsciously.

“Yeah,” Bulma says, and Eighteen flinches as she starts to unhook the wires from Eighteen’s scalp. “That’s what I thought.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

Eighteen only half-listens as Bulma explains her findings. 

She watches as Bulma scrolls through a series of images on one of her computer screens—a collection of figures and scans and graphs blur past, Eighteen’s condition summarized in pixels and abstractions. But it all comes back to the same detail—a small implant, embedded in the tissue of Eighteen’s temporal lobe like a cancerous growth. Something to do with power regulation, Bulma explains—likely disrupted or damaged in Eighteen’s last fight.

Bulma rambles about technical specs and possible fixes, but Eighteen’s focus is elsewhere—she can’t stop touching her temple, as if she expects to feel the shape of the implant through her skull.

“Unfortunately I don’t really have any blueprints to go by,” Bulma’s saying. “The few notes we salvaged from Gero’s labs weren’t particularly helpful, but—”

“Why?” Eighteen interrupts her suddenly. “Why are you helping me?”

Bulma pauses mid-monologue, narrowing her eyes at Eighteen as she looks away from her computer monitor.

“Because we need every fighter we can get against Cell, duh,” Bulma says, and then shrugs. “And more selfishly—I’m an engineer. I build things, I tinker with things—it’s what I do. And there’s no better way to understand a machine than to put it back together after it’s broken.”

Eighteen scowls. “I’m not a _machine_.”

“Okay—fair. I’ve got the scans myself, and the tissue samples. I’m not really sure “android” is the word I would have picked for you.” Bulma pauses to chew thoughtfully on her thumbnail. “If anything, seems like you and your brother are quite a bit more _replicant_ than _Terminator_.”

“Excuse me?”

“...Never mind. Point is, I’m a little outside my normal wheelhouse here,” Bulma says before turning back to the computer, smirking. “Lucky for me I’m a hell of a lot smarter than Gero.”

“Right,” Eighteen mutters. “If that’s the case, then why am I still... damaged?”

“Look, I have a lot on my plate right now,” Bulma scoffs. “Just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean I don’t have a company to run and a baby to take care of—but don’t you worry. I’ll have you up and running in time to fight Cell. I promise.”

Eighteen raises a single eyebrow. “And why should I trust you?”

“Because I could have easily had you destroyed while you were out,” Bulma says, and her smirk widens as she winks at Eighteen. “And more importantly—because I’m Bulma fucking Briefs.”

Eighteen looks at her for a long moment, but doesn’t bother arguing.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Despite Eighteen’s initial reservations, she soon decides that Bulma Briefs is, in fact, good to her word.

Over the next few days, she hardly sees Bulma leave the labs at all, disappearing only to sleep or tend to her child, but sometimes not even for that—at one point, Eighteen catches her simultaneously juggling Trunks and a mug of coffee while poring over schematics. So she’s hardly surprised to find Bulma in the lab one night at a terrible hour, passed out next to her keyboard.

Eighteen pours a fresh mug of coffee from the lab coffee pot before nudging Bulma awake.

“If you’re not going to go to sleep and rest properly,” she says, pushing the mug towards Bulma’s keyboard as Bulma wearily lifts her head from the desk. “Then I feel obligated to push you along.”

Bulma groans, and rubs at one eye with the heel of her palm, as if she might wipe away the bleariness beneath her eyelids. But the dark circles remain, deepened by the harsh glow of her computer monitor.

“Ah, damn it,” she rasps. “How long was I out?”

“Long enough,” Eighteen mutters, and Bulma looks bewildered as she accepts the cup of coffee Eighteen’s nudged in her direction.

“Oh—uh, thanks,” Bulma says as she wraps her palms around the mug. “You didn’t have to—”

“Yes I did,” Eighteen says coolly. “Unless you would prefer to be unconscious and drooling on your desk?”

Despite the dim lighting of the lab, Eighteen can see Bulma’s face redden.

“What I’d prefer,” she says around the lip of her mug as he takes a drink. “Is a cigarette. Or a stiff drink. But I guess the coffee will do.”

Eighteen watches Bulma as she drinks, quickly memorizing the way her lips meet the cup, and the way she pushes a loose strand of blue hair behind her ear. Eighteen blinks slowly, suddenly wondering if her head trauma is more extensive than she had thought—that was never the sort of visual datapoint she would have ever focused on before.

But Bulma quickly pulls her out of that particularly aberrant subroutine.

“You know, you don’t have to stay in the labs all the time,” Bulma says, setting the mug back down. “You’re not a prisoner here.”

“I don’t need to sleep, and I don’t need to eat,” Eighteen says. “Despite my head injury, everything else is working optimally.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Eighteen interrupts, and bristles immediately at the look of pity that passes across Bulma’s face. “I would rather stay here—and help in whatever way I can.”

“Oh, well,” Bulma considers. “I suppose that’s fair. Though I’m not sure if there’s much you can do to help. The good news is I’ve figured out what’s wrong. That implant—” Bulma reaches out to tap Eighteen’s temple, and Eighteen feels herself stiffen, paralyzed by a sudden electric frisson from Bulma’s fingertips. Eighteen feels like she’s on the verge of blacking out again before Bulma pulls away, seemingly unaware of the effect she’s just had. “—it interfaces with the higher parts of your brain so you can consciously regulate your power level. Problem is, that function is completely on the fritz, so every time you try to summon your power, it crashes. Cue Blue Screen of Death.”

Eighteen wrinkles her brow.

“Total blackout,” Bulma clarifies. 

“...Right.”

“I might have a fix for it,” Bulma goes on. “Though I still need to collect a little more data to be sure.”

Eighteen crosses her arms, hunching slightly as she curls in on herself. “We’re running out of time.”

“I know,” Bulma says, heaving a weary sigh. “Trust me, I know. Just—let me run a few more tests on you. That much you can help me with.”

Eighteen doesn’t care for submitting to tests, to being hooked up to wires and machinery like a tormented lab rat. She’s already spent too much of her life that way—submitting to Gero’s tools as he had gone digging around in her head and body, rewiring her synapses until she was the inhuman _thing_ she was now—stripped of her name, assigned a number, and sent out to burn the world down. Android, cyborg, _replicant_ —there wasn’t really any word that could describe what had been done to her.

But Gero had his own awful reasons. Bulma’s intentions… seem to be something else entirely.

Eighteen agrees to her request a little too readily.

 

 

XXX

 

 

The tests are more draining than Eighteen expects, but she pushes through harder than she should.

She's trying to summon her power, little by little, tapping out just before the inevitable blackness sets in. A device strapped to her ear scans the inside of her skull as she forces ki through herself, and Bulma taps occasionally at her keyboard as the incoming datafeed glows across her screen. Her brow furrows, but Eighteen has no idea what the images mean.

She pushes harder.

She feels ki sparking in her fingertips, but this time the room seems to blur around her as she tries to draw upon her power cells. She feels clammy,  sweat quickly beading along her skin. The blackness is just creeping in when she feels warm hands wrap suddenly around her wrists.

Her skin tingles suddenly up the length of her arm, like her ki's been forced to flow in reverse.

“Eighteen, that's enough,” Bulma urges, gently easing Eighteen back until she's forced to sit down on the lab bench.

“No,” Eighteen grits through her teeth. “I can go further.”

But she still feels lightheaded enough that Bulma's face tilts wildly out of focus, and Eighteen can feel her tank top clinging to her skin where her sweat's gone cold. Eighteen tries to move against Bulma's grip, but stiffens when she's met with Bulma's cutting glare—she's not fooling her at all.

“This isn't a challenge,” Bulma snaps. “I'm not trying to test the limits of your power—this is a fucking calibration exercise.”

Eighteen opens her mouth to argue, but feels Bulma pushing a glass of water into her hand.

“Drink this.”

“I'm fine,” Eighteen lies, her tongue nearly sticking to the roof of her mouth.

“God, you fighters are all the same,” Bulma scoffs, and reaches up to pull the scanning device off Eighteen’s ear. “Humans, Saiyans, androids, all of you—you never know when to quit, do you?”

Eighteen takes a begrudging sip of her water. “I stopped before I blacked out, didn’t I?”

“I suppose I’ll give you credit for that. I’ve wasted enough of my time tending to Vegeta’s idiotic, self-inflicted injuries—I don’t need _you_ in the trauma bay, too.”

Eighteen’s mind is still sluggish from the battery of tests—perhaps that’s why she finds herself suddenly smirking at the memory of shattering Vegeta’s humerus only days before.

“Not of all his injuries were self-inflicted,” she mutters behind the lip of her glass.

Bulma leans back, crossing her arms. “You would know, huh?”

Her voice may sound scolding, but Eighteen doesn’t miss the way Bulma’s lips turn up in a subtle smirk of her own.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“How certain are you this is going to work?”

Eighteen tries to meet her gaze, but Bulma doesn’t look up from where she’s focused on Eighteen’s inner arm.

“Nothing in life is ever certain,” Bulma murmurs. “But I can tell you I’m always right.”

Eighteen feels the sting of the needle as it enters her vein, followed by a strange burn as Bulma depresses the plunger. Eighteen closes her eyes, allowing herself to focus on something else instead—the coolness of the lab’s recirculated air, the whirring of overworked computer terminals, the pressure of Bulma’s fingers on her skin.

She fails to suppress the shiver that courses through her.

“Huh. I didn’t peg you as someone with a needle phobia,” Bulma says as she finishes the injection, pulling away to discard the syringe.

Eighteen opens her eyes, and scowls down at where a single drop of blood beads in the crook of her arm.

“I’m not,” she mutters. “How long until this works? We only have four days until the Cell Games, we don’t have time for failure—”

“Twelve hours, twenty-four tops,” Bulma assures her. “When you start feeling the fever hit, you’ll know it’s working.”

Eighteen rubs absently at her temple, just above the damaged implant. She realizes it’s become a habit, like the way she sees Bulma chewing her nails sometimes. Her fingers press hard into her scalp, as if she might find Bulma’s fingerprints there—like she might be able to recreate the strange electricity of Bulma’s touch with her own.

Eighteen forces herself to pull her hand away.

“You couldn’t find a faster way?” she says, directing her scowl at Bulma.

“Well, if you’d prefer me to crack open your skull and do a little open brain surgery, then sure,” Bulma snorts. “But I just cleaned this labcoat, and I’m not particularly keen to get it covered with synthetic cerebrospinal fluid, thank you. You’ll just have to settle for some old-fashioned Capsule Corp nanotech. Microsurgery, from the inside-out.”

“Right,” Eighteen mutters.

Bulma busies herself by tidying up her workspace. “I have to tend to some things outside of this dungeon, in the meantime. And you really don’t have to stay down here all alone, y’know. I meant what I said before—you’re welcome anywhere in Capsule Corp.”

“No thank you,” Eighteen says, reflexively, before she can even really consider the offer.

“Suit yourself,” Bulma shrugs, offering a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Though it would be nice to have you around—to put the fear of God into Vegeta, if nothing else.”

Despite herself, Eighteen can’t resist a self-satisfied smirk. “Tempting.”

“Either way, I’ll be in to check on things to make sure the process is going smoothly,” Bulma continues. “Try and get some rest in the meantime.”

Eighteen rolls her eyes, taking offense at the implication she would need rest for something so minor—and she opens her mouth to say as much. But Bulma’s already slipped out of the room.

Eighteen convinces herself she’s not bothered by that.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Bulma hadn’t been lying about the fever.

Eighteen’s sitting at one of the lab’s computer terminals, poring through Bulma’s nearly incomprehensible work, when it hits her without warning—it comes on quickly, a rising pyrogen storm thar churns and seethes in Eighteen’s veins until it’s licking hot at her skin. She immediately feels winded and dizzy, and the room blurs in a nauseous spin around her as she stumbles away from the desk. She never quite makes it back to the experimental slab at the center of the room—instead she collapses to the floor, half-slumping against a metal console.

Darkness closes around her like a fist, squeezing and releasing as she slips in and out of consciousness, and it feels like her first day in the lab all over again. Some moments she runs cold, and her shivering is strong enough to rouse her from unconsciousness, but more often she runs hot, her throat so dry it hurts to breathe, her skin slick and sticky, and she feels utterly powerless as Bulma’s concoction does its work. She has to trust that it’s working, that it really is re-modelling her implant and neurons from the inside out—that this isn’t some insidious form of sabotage, a clever ruse to take out an enemy—but Bulma’s never lied to her.

Not yet.

Paranoia is a familiar algorithm to her, but Eighteen tries to fight through it as she endures the ravages of the fever. Soon, it feels like she’s spent hours in this dark limbo—and maybe she has—and she begins to feel suffocated in this room that suddenly feels too small, trapped in this  narrow prison of her own making. She finds herself delirious enough to start contemplating Bulma’s offer—maybe she _should_ just leave. It would be easy to track Bulma down in the Capsule Corp compound, if only Eighteen could find the strength—

But Bulma finds her first.

It’s dark in the lab, but Eighteen blinks awake from her fever dreams long enough to see Bulma, haloed in the harsh, fluorescent light of the doorway. She’s painfully bright, her blue hair and white labcoat harsh against the shadows. Eighteen winces, but doesn’t feel compelled to look away.

“Jesus,” Bulma hisses as she rushes into the room, crouching over Eighteen on the floor. “I’m a fucking idiot, I shouldn’t have left you here alone—god damn it, Eighteen—”

Eighteen feels Bulma’s hands around her waist, surprised by Bulma’s strength as she hoists Eighteen up from the floor—Eighteen shakes, but she finds balance against the console behind her, and Bulma’s grip on her is firm.

“You need some water, and to lie down—gods, how long have you been on the floor—”

Eighteen’s eyelids flicker as her vision finally comes into focus—all she can see are Bulma’s eyes, wide and shining, and the worry there makes Eighteen want to recoil.

“I’m fine,” she rasps, but she sounds unconvincing even to herself, and nothing ever gets past Bulma—she presses a palm against Eighteen’s forehead.

“Wow, you’re burning up,” Bulma goes on, but Eighteen barely hears her. She stiffens underneath Bulma’s hand, powerless to move, feeling like she’s standing in the wake of a rapidly cresting wave. “I guess that’s a good sign, the treatment must be taking—but fuck, you need something to drink—and don’t even try to argue with me about this, Eighteen—”

Bulma moves to pull away, but Eighteen’s hand snaps around Bulma’s wrist, her body suddenly flooded with a strength she hasn’t felt in days. Eighteen’s hands feel hot, thrumming with a familiar energy— _ki_ _._ Pure, uninterrupted ki, and Eighteen has to scramble to remember how to pull the energy back before she burns Bulma with it.

The burn of ki at her fingertips feels good. Really good. But something else is rising within her, something that runs even deeper than her rapidly waking energy cores. It’s sudden—Bulma’s hand on her forehead brings something else online, not just Eighteen’s ki, but something similar—something bright and violent and suffocating. An exhilarating pain, inflicted by the slightest graze of Bulma’s fingers, burning her from the inside out, hotter than any fever.

“Eighteen—” Bulma breathes, but her words fall short in her throat as Eighteen grabs her by the jaw and pulls her into a hard kiss.

Their mouths slide together roughly, teeth knocking together in their sudden need to taste each other, and Eighteen half-expects Bulma to tear away from her. But instead she feels Bulma’s body sagging against hers, struck by a sudden weakness that Eighteen didn’t think possible in this woman who has been nothing but a hard-headed pain in the ass since day one. She makes a noise against Eighteen’s lips—a smothered whine that has Eighteen’s skin burning hot all over again, and she can barely keep her balance against the console behind her.

 She pulls away from Bulma.

“Eighteen,” Bulma says again, breathless against Eighteen’s lips, but Eighteen’s already disentangled from her. The room spins around her again, faster than before.

And for the first time in days, Eighteen successfully flees the lab.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Eighteen feels untethered. She finds herself hiding in the lights and shadows of West City, loathing everyone and everything, and she feels herself sliding toward old impulses—she wants nothing more than to raze the city to the ground and to burn everyone who even dares to look at her. She feels ki collect in her palms as she stands on an empty street, and imagines the heat of the flames as the city burns around her. It would be so easy.

But for the first time, she questions the source of that impulse—is that really what she wants? Or is it, like so many other things, just the phantom of Gero haunting her circuitry—all junk code and bad handiwork superimposed over her real instincts?

For the first time, she feels her puppet strings snapping apart.

For the thousandth time, she thinks of Bulma Briefs.

She tries not to. She tries to direct her focus anywhere else. She thinks of Cell—she imagines him out there, waiting, and she feels consumed with a rage that she knows belongs entirely to herself. She considers going out to fight him _now,_ forget his fucking Cell Games—she wants to end this once and for all.

It’s a satisfying idea. But a reckless one—she knows she’s spiraling, but her fever faded hours ago; she can’t even blame her impulsive desire on delirium.

So she paces the concrete, and eventually finds herself orbiting closer and closer to Capsule Corp. Perhaps resisting its pull was an exercise in futility.

Bulma had taken her in, mended her injuries, fixed what was broken—whatever else she had done, Eighteen couldn’t put words to it, but—the draw is unmistakable. She can still feel the imprints of Bulma’s fingers where they had grazed Eighteen’s skin.

Eighteen looks to the Capsule Corp. compound, looming behind the city skyline.

Maybe for one night, she could stop fighting.

 

 

XXX

 

 

It isn’t hard to track down Bulma’s ki. Eighteen had plenty of time to memorize it in the close quarters of the lab—the shape of it, the low smolder of it; it was nothing compared to the behemoth power signatures of Bulma’s associates—little more than a drop of rain in a stormcloud—but Eighteen feels it out just the same

She finds Bulma in her bedroom, and Eighteen lands on the outside balcony, hesitating for a moment behind the glass doors. Bulma fails to notice her, back turned to the wall of windows, and Eighteen watches as Bulma toes off her shoes and begins to unbutton the top of her labcoat.

But Eighteen grimaces, having no intention of sneaking out some voyeuristic view. Without any fanfare, she throws open one of the glass doors, and steps inside.

Bulma turns to face her, her surprise barely registering as anything more than a cocked eyebrow.

“Huh,” she says, resting a hand on her hip. “When I said you could go anywhere in Capsule Corp, I wasn’t exactly expecting you to turn up in my bedroom.”

Eighteen closes the door behind her. “I came to apologize.”

Bulma snorts. “Apologize? For what, all those times you tried to kill me? I appreciate it, but—”

“No,” Eighteen says bluntly, and Bulma seems to stiffen as Eighteen’s gaze locks onto her. “Without asking for anything in return, you treated my injuries, and restored me to a fully functional state.” Eighteen offers an outstretched hand, a single flame of ki flickering across her palm to demonstrate her point. “And I repaid with you with cowardice.”

Bulma smirks as she undoes the rest of the buttons of her labcoat, and Eighteen’s eyes drag over the curves of Bulma’s dress underneath.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve sent someone running,” she says, flashing a quick wink. “I tend to have that effect.”

Eighteen feels her cheeks burning, but refuses to look away. She allows the ki in her palm to flicker out.

“And what do you with the ones who come crawling back?” Eighteen asks, her voice suddenly hoarse and thick in her throat.

Bulma’s smile is wide and mischievous as she takes Eighteen’s outstretched hand into her own.

“I show them mercy.”

Eighteen looks down at where their hands touch, drawn to the way Bulma’s thumb settles over her wrist. Her skin warms against Bulma’s hand, as if it were still burning with ki, and something feels like it’s come unlocked in Eighteen’s chest.

Eighteen looks up, and finds herself caught in Bulma’s piercing blue gaze.  Suddenly, she remembers the first time they’d ever made contact—Eighteen’s fingers, wrapped around Bulma’s neck in threat. She wonders what Bulma’s throat would feel like now, if she reached out to touch it—would she find Bulma’s pulse racing beneath her fingertips? Would it be pounding as hard as Eighteen’s?

She reaches to find out.

Eighteen’s fingers settle against the base of Bulma’s throat, her thumb brushing softly against Bulma’s collarbone. Her skin is warm, and Eighteen doesn’t miss the way Bulma’s breath hitches as her throat bobs beneath Eighteen’s hand. But her heartbeat is steady, a heavy pounding where Eighteen had expected little more than a weak flutter. Eighteen licks her lips at the heat of it, and feels herself drawing nearer

But it’s Bulma who closes the space between them, her mouth closing against Eighteen’s. Eighteen makes a strangled sound against Bulma’s lips before she pushes Bulma back, forcing her roughly up against the bedroom wall as their mouths slide together. Her fingers finally fall away from Bulma’s neck, her hands sliding beneath the fabric of Bulma’s labcoat to feel out the curve of her waist and the swell of her hips, and Eighteen feels Bulma’s body press eagerly against hers.

Eighteen feels heat coiling within her, ki rising unbidden until she can reign it back, and she sinks her teeth into Bulma’s bottom lip with a low growl. She can feel Bulma weakening, her legs buckling as Eighteen nips into her, but Eighteen presses her harder still against the wall. By the time Eighteen slides a hand under the hem of Bulma’s dress, Bulma’s broken away from their kiss with a quiet gasp, her arms locking around Eighteen’s shoulders like it’s the only thing stopping her from puddling into the ground.

Eighteen kisses her again, her lips settling against Bulma’s throat as her fingers find the welcome heat between Bulma’s legs. Bulma writhes hard against her, and Eighteen savors the taste of Bulma’s pulse thundering against her mouth—old sensors blink back to life as Eighteen takes in the form of Bulma’s sparking ki signature, a collapsing wave of energy and biochemical signals that tastes ambrosial on Eighteen’s tongue.

Eighteen presses hard within her, time coming uncoupled from the heated movements between them—it seems sudden when Bulma’s fingernails dig deep into the back of Eighteen’s neck, and Eighteen moves faster with the breathless sounds that fall from Bulma’s lips, the moment spiralling tighter until finally Bulma trembles and gasps against her.

The heat fails to dissipate between them as Eighteen’s hand slowly pulls away, her palm resting against the soft skin of Bulma’s thigh, and her mouth presses a hard kiss against Bulma’s jaw.

“You give it rough, huh?“ Bulma manages to whisper, breathless as her head falls back against the wall, her eyes squeezed shut. Eighteen watches her for several long moments, drawn to the pink flush that’s spread across Bulma’s heaving chest.

"Or maybe you don’t know what it’s like any other way,” Bulma adds, and suddenly her eyes are open, bright and piercing even in her comedown, and Eighteen feels like she’s being cut down to the quick by her stare alone. She feels suddenly naked, raw, and part of her wants to destroy Bulma before she can get the upper-hand—Eighteen feels her hands suddenly twitching, ki threatening to pool into her fingertips.

But then Bulma kisses her, with a softness that hits harder than any ki-blast possibly could, and Eighteen feels gutted.

“If you let me,” Bulma breathes against Eighteen’s lips. “I can show you what I mean.”

Eighteen slides a hand beside Bulma’s face, trying to steady herself against the wall behind her, and hopes Bulma doesn’t notice the way her breath shakes. She looks away, powerless against Bulma’s gaze, eyes drawn to the balcony windows and the darkened sky beyond it. It would be easy to flee again, to run from this weakness that’s left her trembling and lightheaded in the darkness of Bulma’s bedroom, pressed close to the warmth of Bulma’s body.

But Bulma’s hands on her wrist tether Eighteen, and she doesn’t fight it as Bulma leads her toward the bed.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Eighteen lies awake long afterwards, but feels Bulma shift in and out of sleep against her as the night slowly bleeds into morning. There is something soothing about the weight of Bulma’s arm curled around her waist, her breath soft and rhythmic as she dreams, the warmth of her lips pressed against Eighteen’s shoulder. And Eighteen can’t stop herself from dwelling on that—the impossible softness of Bulma’s mouth on her skin.

She hadn’t been lying to Eighteen when she had promised something gentler, and Eighteen shivers at the still-fresh memory of Bulma, between her legs, tasting her and touching her in a way that had left Eighteen utterly defeated.

It would be so easy to lie here for an eternity, Eighteen thinks, tangled in Bulma’s sheets, bodies weaved close, and Eighteen indulges herself in a moment of complacency. As the sun begins to glow low on the horizon, she presses herself closer to Bulma, clinging to the fleeting darkness that binds them together.

It isn’t long before Bulma finally begins to rouse.

“You didn’t sleep, did you?” she hears Bulma whisper blearily against her skin.

Eighteen swallows, shifting as Bulma’s fingers stroke the bare skin of her stomach. “No.”

Eighteen feels Bulma’s smile against her shoulder. “Huh. Wish I had the kind of bottomless energy as you androids, to be honest.”

“It comes at a cost, I promise you.”

Bulma doesn’t have a response for that, and a moment of silence hangs between them.

“I should get up,” she says eventually. “Better go check on Trunks.”

“Right,” Eighteen murmurs, and absently strums her fingers against Bulma’s hand, still resting against Eighteen’s waist, and Eighteen’s almost disturbed at how easily the gesture comes to her.

“Will you still be here when I get back?”

Eighteen considers the question, but looks away to the balcony windows, where the morning light is just beginning to spill in through the glass. Her hours are numbered, and she knows it. Even from this distance, she can sense her next threat, the dawn of the Cell Games drawing nearer with each moment. She closes her eyes against the weight of it.

“I don’t know,” she admits.

Bulma lifts Eighteen’s hand with her own, pressing a kiss into her palm. “I get it. You’re back in fighting form, and you have to prepare for what’s coming.”

But Eighteen doesn’t want to do any such thing, and can’t bring herself to pull away from Bulma’s touch. But she forces herself to draw up the memories of her brother, and Sixteen—a sobering reminder of why she’ll have to leave this bed, one way or another.

“You know there’s a place for you here when you come back,” Bulma goes on. “If there is a place to come back to, I mean.”

Eighteen pulls her hand back, and returns the kiss, pressing her mouth into Bulma’s palm.

“I know.”

 

XXX

**Author's Note:**

> (Story title courtesy of "Touch" by Daft Punk)


End file.
